The Kid: A Novel (16 page)

Seeing the Ealys getting into an Army wagon and heading for Fort Stanton, Susan McSween ran next door waving a white handkerchief over her head and accosted a captain who was rolling a cigarette while leaning lazily against a post of the mercantile store. “We have three horrified children in that house,” she cried. “I beseech you to give them protection.”

The captain turned to Dudley, and he nodded. Hostilities ceased as Susan McSween, Elizabeth Shield, and the coughing Shield children walked out of the house and got into a navy blue Army ambulance. Once they were gone, a hail of bullets recommenced going every whichway, though actual human targets were lacking.

The captain looked at his master sergeant, a veteran of Chickamauga and Marietta as well as the Indian wars. He asked, “What’s your estimate of the gunfire? How many rounds have been shot?”

“Just today?”

“Yes.”

The master sergeant seemed lost in arithmetic, then answered, “About two thousand.”

Watching the dragon of fire grow wings, the captain told his master sergeant, “If the poor devils still in that hellhole get away, they’re entitled to their freedom.”

*  *  *

In the house, the Kid said, “We can’t just stay here and fry.” With handkerchiefs to their faces, they all turned at the sudden liveliness. “I’m thinking a few of us might could sneak out the kitchen for the east gate. We’ll draw fire and distract the shooters enough that you can get out the river gate and slide down to the Rio Bonito.”

The crack and collapse of an overhead joist fostered their agreement.

Harvey Morris, José Chávez y Chávez, and of course Tom Folliard joined the Kid in hanging out by the east wing’s kitchen. The Kid took the loan of a gun for his left hand to twin with his right and was, as usual, smiling. “Okay, how do we get outta this?” he asked. When they frowned, he said, “Quick, fast, and in a hurry.” And he took the lead in crouching outside into a night illumined by the bonfire of the once stately home before he raced to the east gate.

John Kinney’s men and a few infantry and cavalry soldiers noticed and fired at his party, felling Harvey Morris before he’d gone three yards. But the Kid was shrewd and sudden at whatever he did. Gun sights would find and then lose him. Certain kills ended up cracking pickets and chopping dirt. With his Regulators running past him, the Kid fired with both hands like a trick shot artist, finally holding his aim on the face of his former employer, John Kinney, and in a rare miss shooting off only a wing of his mustache. The Kid then jumped the picket fence and took a hunkered run for the tamarisks alongside the Rio Bonito, followed by those who’d joined him.

They escaped homicide but others did not. Waiting by the north gate on the east side of the backyard were the Seven Rivers ranchers and possemen Robert Beckwith, Ma’am Jones’s son Johnny, and Andy Boyle. Jones and Beckwith hated each other because of a cattle dispute, but they had been ordered by Kinney to position themselves near McSween’s chicken coop. They saw McSween run out of his house with some Mexicans around nine p.m., but with the barrage of gunfire from the sheriff’s men, they hustled back inside.

Andy Boyle later recalled, “Then the fire became promiscuous. And that was the time the big killing was made.”

Robert Beckwith shouted, “I am a deputy sheriff and I have got a warrant for your arrest!”

A half minute passed in a lull as Alex McSween considered his dilemma, and then he called out, “Will you take us as prisoners?”

“I have come for that precise purpose!”

McSween then stated, “I shall surrender!”

Beckwith walked cautiously toward McSween’s voice and found him crouching near the east kitchen against an exterior wall. Alex was without a gun, but when Deputy Beckwith held out a hand to help him stand, McSween so hated the loss of his possessions and his livelihood that he changed his mind, yelling, “I’ll
never
surrender!”

An infantry soldier mistaught by the Indian wars took that as an invitation, and in friendly fire killed Robert Beckwith with a head shot.

Johnny Jones just considered the soldier with curiosity, like he’d been calculatingly rude, then he looked back at the scene. Hundreds of bullets chattered at Alexander McSween’s crew, with the Canadian stuttering forward in his dying walk, hit four times from waist to neck until a shot located his skull and he fell dead, his three flourishing years in Lincoln ended by gunfire from every whichway. Vincente Romero and Francisco Zamora were next to die, and then the youth Yginio Salazar was hit with gunshots to his shoulder and back.

All was still except for a few far-off gunshots that popped like fiesta firecrackers. John Kinney and his Rio Grande Posse delicately walked into the yard to stand over the bodies and watch for breathing.

Oozing blood and playing possum, Salazar felt his ribs kicked testingly by Andy Boyle and heard Kinney say, “Don’t waste a shot on that greaser, he’s dead as a herring.” Even as scavengers looted the Tunstall store and the victors celebrated with whiskey, Salazar waited.

The officers and men from Fort Stanton joined in the anarchy for a while but, once filled with rations and drink, were ordered into their tents and slept without nightmares of having done nothing to halt the bloodshed, help the wounded, or even bury the many dead, whose bodies stayed overnight where they’d fallen.

An hour before dawn, when only a few infantry guards were not sleeping, Yginio Salazar finally risked his hesitant, bloodletting crawl for help, squirming forward on his belly for more than a mile to reach the home of Miguel Otero. Much later Miguel would recall that Yginio told him in Spanish, “Even in our great danger, the Kid was the coolest man I ever saw.”

*  *  *

Lieutenant Colonel Dudley took pride in waking before five, and he was fully dressed and inhaling the fresh morning air when he strolled to the incinerated house at sunrise, seeing only embers and ashes and a few kites of smoke. Robert Beckwith had been carried away by other deputies, but Harvey Morris, Alexander McSween, Vincente Romero, and Francisco Zamora were just where they’d fallen eight hours earlier. Some hungry chickens were pecking at their faces. In a gesture he thought of as gallant, the post commander found a patchwork quilt that had been looted from the Tunstall store and slung it over Alexander A. McSween’s corpse, scattering hens, then he headed for a hot coffee.

- 12 -

ADRIFT

E
xcited, jittery, and still electrified by the threat of death, the Kid snuck back into Lincoln that night and stole cavalry horses for himself and Tom Folliard. Then they splashed north across the Rio Bonito to the foothills where Regulators in hiding whistled to them. They congregated on a mesa, and each squatted with his soft horse’s head next to his own, reins in hand just in case there were soldier pursuers. A few partook of some kitchen rye. His heart still hectic with the could-haves of the murderous night, the Kid even smoked one of Fred Waite’s machine-made cigarettes just to see if it would calm his jangling nerves.

Doc Scurlock read his Elgin pocket watch in the moonlight and announced, “Almost three in the morning. I was about to siwash.”

Tom Folliard asked, “What’s that mean?”

“Sleep. Old Indian term.”

Charlie Bowdre told Billy, “Real sorry we had to absquatulate earlier.”

Tom Folliard began to ask, “What’s ab—”

“Decamp,” Doc Scurlock said. “Hurry off. Leave abruptly.”

“It’s just a word,” said Bowdre and returned to Billy. “We was sore tormented that they had that howitzer square on us so we hightailed it, but we sorta made you boys the escapegoats.”

“Well, at least a few of us got through it.”

Because he thought it needed saying, George Coe added, “And the rest dint.”

Heads hung for a while. And then there was some desultory conversation about their footing from here on out.

Each recognized that the Lincoln County War was essentially over and they were on the losing side. A seemingly petty grocery store rivalry had conjoined some cattlemen’s resentment of John Chisum’s financial success and caused not only civil unrest and a number of murders but the closing of both vying stores that were at the origin of the struggle. And now the Regulators with other options were choosing to head elsewhere: the Mexican farmers to San Patricio and its outlying
placitas
and the Coe cousins perhaps traipsing north to farm in Colorado. Fred Waite wondered about a return to his father’s prosperity in the Indian Territories; and Doc Scurlock and Charlie Bowdre thought they might could rejoin the sisters waiting for them on the Rio Ruidoso in order to get their gatherings and hire on as wranglers on the Jinglebob.

It would be remembered as “a war pow-wow.” Franklin Coe noticed the Kid’s silence and asked, “You got plans?”

The Kid stubbed out the Pearl of the Orient cigarette after inhaling again, coughing, and disliking it. “It’s odd,” he said, “but with the gun battle and risks and all, this is the most complete I’ve ever felt. So I guess it’s not all over with me. I’m gonna steal myself a living until I feel revenged.”

*  *  *

Eighteen years old, rootless, and jobless, Billy Bonney fell into a drifting life of catch as catch can, with horse thievery his main occupation. But first he went to visit Carlota in San Patricio just a few hours later on July 20, finding her heating tortillas in a skillet in the family hacienda with her overweight mother, Sofia, and Aunt Hortensia. Carlota shrieked with astonishment and joy when she saw him at the front door, calling him “
Chivato
,” the Mexican-Spanish for Kid, and running to hug him as she kissed him over and over again.

“
Así da gusto verte
,” he said. So good to see you.

She said she’d heard about the killings in Lincoln; she hadn’t heard if he’d been among the dead.

“
Estoy vivito
,” he said. I’m very alive.

Her mother and aunt welcomed “Bee-ly” into their casa like a prodigal son but were not beyond urging some morning ablutions upon him, for he’d been a few days without benefit of so much as a cat lick. Returning from the yard pump, his tawny hair still wet, he found a feast of huevos rancheros and cinnamon churros. Carlota was as close as a coat sleeve to him as she said, “
Mi madre te llama Ojos Brillantes
.” My mother calls you Bright Eyes. “
Ella piensa que eres muy guapo
.” She thinks you’re very handsome.

“
Me veo feo
,” he said. I’m feeling ugly. “
No he dormido
.” I haven’t slept.

Sofia heavily fell into a chair at the dinner table just across from the Kid and watched him like his famished eating was merry entertainment. After he’d cleaned his plate she asked, “
Ya terminaste
?” Are you finished?

“
Todo muy rico
,” he said. Everything was excellent.

She folded her arms in front of her shelf of a chest as if in the midst of a quarrelsome transaction. “
Tenemos que hablar
,” she said. We need to talk. In Spanish, Carlota’s mother noted that the girl was fifteen now and therefore free to marry. She herself had married at fifteen, Tía Hortensia at fourteen. Carlota, she knew, pined for El Chivato; she no longer wanted to be just his
novia
, sweetheart, or even his
querida
, his lover. She wanted to be his
desposada
, bride.

Carlota softly whispered in the Kid’s ear, “
Déjame embarazada
.” Make me pregnant. “
Quiero un Billito.
” I want a little Billy.

Carlota’s mother overheard but just shrugged as she shifted to the main problem, telling Billy in Spanish that she thought of him as generous, heroic, a man of justice, the enemy of their enemies. She was glad when she heard the Kid was avenging the Spanish people even if he was not fully aware of it. She said in the English he didn’t know she knew, “We sees you one of us.”

“
Pero?
” he asked. But?

Well, he was
encantador y atractivo
, enchanting and attractive. Little wonder that Carlota was in love with him.

Carlota squeezed her arm inside his and tilted her sweet head on his shoulder.

But he would not be a good husband or father, Sofia told him.

Carlota cried in shock, “
Mama, no!
”

Sofia had heard he was wanted for murder in Arizona and New Mexico, so she realized Billy could never rest. Endlessly on the run and forever hounded, even in Mexico if he went there. She’d experienced American justice for the have-nots. Soon his name would be famous and rewards for him would be posted. Would he live a few years longer? Yes, perhaps. But gunmen end up in coffins so quickly. And she did not raise her child to become a widow at fifteen, eighteen, twenty.

“
Lo comprendo
,” the Kid said. I understand.

There was more, of course, Carlota crying in a childish, passionate tantrum and all three females yelling loudly and stomping and throwing their hands around. All during the dither the Kid found himself thinking how tired of wild emotion he was, how very much older than pretty Carlota he felt, and how piffling and unimportant the caterwauling seemed after all he’d been through, the dying he’d seen, the kill shots he’d avoided. So he got up from the table, hatted himself with his sombrero, and quietly exited the casa like his feet were on hot coals.

When she noticed he was gone, Carlota screamed “Bee-ly!” but she must have been restrained from running to him. And as he got onto his stolen cavalry horse, all that the Kid could think was
Another person subtracted
.

*  *  *

On the first day of August, Dr. Joseph Hoy Blazer got into an altercation with Morice J. Bernstein, the twenty-two-year-old bookkeeper for the Mescalero Apache Indian Agency headquarters at Blazer’s Mill. The Iowa dentist accused the Englishman as well as the Indian agent there, an Army major, of funneling food and commodities intended for the Apaches to Jimmy Dolan for reselling. Which was probably true. Hidden in Bernstein’s ledgers, Blazer argued, were faint penciled notes on the secret transactions. In high dudgeon, the feisty bookkeeper claimed he’d done no such thing and called Joseph Blazer a bloody liar.