The Kid: A Novel (25 page)

The election was on November 2, 1880, and Sheriff Kimbrell would have normally stayed in office until January 1, but with cattlemen providing him a financial incentive, Kimbrell appointed Garrett as his deputy and pretty much vacationed for the next two months.

A journalist interviewing the new deputy sheriff inquired if he thought he could quell New Mexico’s outlawry, and Garrett told him, “Yes, I can. Because outlaws all have one thing in common: sooner or later they find themselves wanting to get caught.”

*  *  *

Governor Lew Wallace’s novel
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
was published in New York by Harper & Brothers on November 12, and he was in the East, neglecting his government duties and also ignoring the telegraphed entreaties of Billy’s lawyer, Judge Ira Leonard, who vowed the Kid would cease his illegal activities if he was just given the clemency that the governor had promised.

Soon everything began turning sour.

About the time that Lew Wallace was getting the first accolades for his bestselling novel, the Kid and his gang were riding into Puerto de Luna, forty miles northwest of Fort Sumner. Arctic cold flooded over the West that November, and they all wore woolen scarves over their heads and ears and hunched under the wind with bandannas over their noses, snarling at the agonies of weather. Wanting food and heat, they hitched their horses and with their spurs jangling walked into the restaurant and general store of Alexander Grzelachowski (Gur-zel-a-hóf-ski). He was a jovial, overweight, fifty-six-year-old former Catholic priest from Gracina, Poland, who’d been invited to New Mexico by the archbishop of Santa Fe, Jean-Baptiste l’Amy. But after some years as pastor of a church in Las Vegas, “my laziness ate all my wits,” as Grzelachowski put it, and he left the priesthood. Billy now thought of Padre Polaco’s place as his lair in Puerto de Luna, and he felt like flaunting his friendship with an educated European to his gang. With him were Tom Folliard, Charlie Bowdre, and Billie Wilson. Of late Wilson and the Dedricks were getting away with passing Wilson’s counterfeit currency, buying the finest new guns that way and so outraging the stung businessmen Jimmy Dolan and Joseph LaRue that they wrote letters of complaint to officials in the United States Treasury, who thereafter named Wilson, the Dedricks, and, of course, William H. Bonney as “persons of interest.”

Wedged into the gang just that morning was twenty-six-year-old Dave Rudabaugh, originally from Illinois. Called Dirty Dave because of his aversion to soap and water, he was an offensive, ruthless, dark-bearded lout filling up the doorway in his slouch hat and rank goat-hair coat. Doc Holliday had gambled with him in Dodge City and was quoted as saying, “Dave Rudabaugh is an ignorant scoundrel! I disapprove of his very existence. I considered ending it myself on several occasions but self-control got the better of me.” Wyatt Earp wore out three horses hunting for him following his robbery of a Santa Fe Railroad construction camp, and after Rudabaugh’s failed train holdup in Kansas, Bat Masterson finally arrested him. But he was offered immunity if he squealed on his three partners in crime, and he did, avoiding a five-year sentence in Leavenworth prison. Ending up in Las Vegas, Rudabaugh hired on as a policeman just to seem an unlikely stagecoach robber, which he was, but after a friend was arrested for murder, Rudabaugh tried to jailbreak him, succeeding only in killing a much-loved deputy, Antonio Lino Valdez. So Dirty Dave was on the lam, found Billie Wilson in White Oaks, and Wilson in turn convinced the Kid they needed a fifth Rustler. Currying the Kid’s favor, Rudabaugh had said, “Real sorry Alex McSween was taken from us. When he was just getting into lawyering, he was a schoolteacher at the Miles farm in Eureka. Taught my little sister Ida. Nice man, she said.”

“Small world.”

Entering the Grzelachowski establishment, the five were greeted by a genial owner, who flung his arms wide and fondly grinned as he said, “
Halo, Boleslaw
!
Jak się masz
?” Hello, William! How are you?

“
Świetnie
,” the Kid said. Just fine. “Wanted to introduce you to my pals.”

Hands were shaken and names exchanged, and Padre Polaco asked the Kid, “Would you like to take something on the teeth? I have a kettle of borscht on the stove. Red beetroot, onion, garlic, very hearty.” Without waiting for a reply, he went to his kitchen cabinet and pulled down six Navajo bowls before calling out, “And some sweet Tokaji Aszú wine for the chilliness? I have.”

And Charlie called out, “You still a horse trader?”

Padre Polaco asked, “You need?”

Tom explained, “On the scout so much, we’re the ruination of animals.”

“I have horses.”

The Kid was warming himself in front of the fireplace and saw Billie Wilson dawdling near a display case. The Kid called to him, “You find a naked lady under that glass?”

“I’m shopping. The padre’s got some nice things.”

The Kid walked over and gazed at the jewelry as he stood beside Wilson. He retrieved a golden crucifix on a golden necklace and held it up to his gang. “Charlie, Tom. Would Paulita like this?”

“Hell if I know,” Tom said, and Charlie just shrugged.

The ex-priest asked, “Is she Catholic?”

“Well, she’s French and Spanish.”

“Then maybe.”

The Kid fitted the necklace inside its green velvet pocket and paid Grzelachowski the full price. The owner served the borscht, red wine, and hunks of stale bread to be soaked in the soup. Wrinkling his nose at Rudabaugh’s devastating odor, he told him, “I could find you in a room with no light.”

Rudabaugh thought it over for a few seconds and then concluded, “You sayin I stink?”

The Kid said, “He’s saying you have a strong
personality
.”

“Well, I guess that’s accurate.”

Charlie interrupted to praise the borscht, saying, “This here is in the nick of time. My belly’s been thinking my throat’s been cut.”

The former pastor asked while laying down cutlery, “And how are you and Manuela faring?”

“She’s with child. See, we got this here picture took.” Charlie was wearing a gray, caped Civil War sergeant’s coat that was called a surtout and he found in its inside pocket a ferrotype of himself sitting in his finest dancing clothes and, in the fashion of the time, displaying his six-gun and Winchester ’73, looking again like a gloomy Edgar Allan Poe as his unsmiling common-law wife stood next to him, one hand formally on his left shoulder and the other gently riding the balloon of her belly.

“Very laughly,” Grzelachowski said. “I am exceeding happiness for you.”

Tom craned his neck to see and said she didn’t look all that pregnant.

“Old picture. She’s as big as a wish now.”

“Is nine months the usual?” Tom asked.

“
Oui, mon enfant
,” said Padre Polaco as he sat across from the Kid. They ate in silence until he finally got out, “You have a birthday soon?”

“November twenty-third.”

“That’s today!”

“Then I have reached my majority.”

“Aged twenty-one,” Tom needlessly said.

Padre Polaco regarded Tom with pity, then returned to the Kid. “So, no clemency yet?”

“I got Judge Ira Leonard working on it. But the governor’s in New York and avoiding me. I’m heading to White Oaks from here to hash out some legalities with Ira.”

Wagging his finger but smiling, the ex-priest said, “You are afflicted with the general problem of disregarding the distinction between
meum
and
tuum
.”

The Kid frowned.

“Latin for ‘mine’ and ‘yours.’ Old seminary joke.” The padre lifted up and looked over the Kid’s head to Billie Wilson as he yelled, “Ho there! I’ll hang dogs on you if you steal from me!”

The Kid hated the fatherly whine in his own voice as he turned and asked Wilson, “Oh, wha’ja
do
?”

Padre Polaco rose from the rough-hewn table and rushed the petty thief.

“Nothin,” Wilson explained to the Kid. “I was just holdin it in my pocket. Seein if it fit. I
got
money.”

Padre Polaco forced his hand inside Wilson’s overcoat pocket and retrieved a Waltham watch in a gold case. “Shame on you!” he scolded.

Anticipating an uproar, Charlie said, “We better eat up, Tom.” They both began hurriedly spooning borscht and slurping down wine.

The Kid said, “You were gonna pay him for it, weren’t you? You just had more shopping to do?”

Wide-eyed with innocence, Wilson told the ex-priest, “Yes! My family’s festive and I have Christmas things to get!”

Padre Polaco examined the price tag. “Thirty-eight dollars. You have it?”

“Here,” Wilson said and found a folded hundred-dollar bill in his trousers.

The Kid sighed. “Don’t take it, Padre. It’s worthless.”

Grzelachowski squinted at the note in the lamplight and felt the texture of the paper before holding it over the hurricane lamp and letting the counterfeit bill brown and blacken and flame into ash.

“Hey!” Wilson said, but it was late and halfhearted.

“Enjoyed the dinner,” Tom said, getting up.

Rudabaugh was heading outside, but his odor would linger for days.

The Kid saw that no one else was volunteering to pay for their dinner, so with exasperation he said, “Here, let me get this,” and generously laid down five authentic two-dollar bills with Thomas Jefferson in the left oval and a vignette of the United States Capitol in the center.

“
Dziękuję
,” the owner told the Kid. Thank you.

“I’m really sorry about the fuss.”

“Yes, yes.” Padre Polaco smiled. “But all my customers bring me happiness. Some by coming, some by leaving.” And then he said like the gravest of teachers, “But I have a warning for you about your friends. ‘He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.’ ”

Exiting, Billie Wilson yelled, “This is a fine way to treat your dinner guests!”

Padre Polaco yelled back a Polish get-lost expression that in English would be “Oh, go stuff yourself with hay!”

*  *  *

Tying a woolen scarf over his skull and ears again and fixing his sugarloaf sombrero over it, the Kid adjusted his fine sable coat and got up on his latest horse. And then he heard hooting from the night of Grzelachowski’s corral as Wilson, Rudabaugh, and a what-the-hell Folliard urged four stallions, four geldings, four mares, and four fillies through the yanked-open gate using spurs to various hindquarters. Charlie Bowdre was overseeing the theft and sheepishly twisted in his saddle. “Won’t listen to me, them.”

The Kid yelled, “What are you
doing
? Alex is a friend of mine.”

“We thought
we
was your friends,” Rudabaugh said. “And he disrespected us.” His hand was on his six-gun, and the Kid could tell he was wanting to use it. The Kid felt so tired of all this quarreling and menace that he made the mistake of giving in, just riding gloomily toward White Oaks as planned, his skin feeling the itch of fleas.

And that continued as he just watched Billie Wilson sell Padre Polaco’s horses to West & Dedrick Livery & Sales and divvy the cash among the thieves. Then Wilson, Folliard, and Rudabaugh felt a hankering for the saloons and sporting ladies of White Oaks, while the father-to-be and the Kid just gambled.

With the dealer shuffling his cards, the Kid asked, “You feel worn-out, Charlie? Not just tonight, but lately?”

“Well, yeah. A-course. We got so much to-ing and fro-ing I don’t know whether to scratch my watch or wind my nuts.”

The Kid collected his cards and immediately folded. “I’m frazzled, too. We ought’ve quit the territory when Waite and the Coes did.”

Bowdre finished his jigger of whiskey and said, “That locomotive done left the depot.”

And then Rudabaugh, Wilson, and Folliard shambled in with a burden of stolen overcoats, woolen blankets, and cardboard boxes of tinned food. Tom Folliard grinned as he said, “Look what we got!”

Wiping his coined winnings into his left hand, the Kid stood. “Where?”

“Will Hudgens’s store.”

The Kid hissed, “But he’s from Lincoln. Will Hudgens knows you and me, Tom.”

“So?” Rudabaugh said.

Charlie Bowdre looked at the many rubberneckers in the saloon and whispered, “We best get outta here.”

*  *  *

The five hustled out, the Kid forgetting his yellow gloves, got on their horses with their ill-gotten gains, and galloped off to the Greathouse & Kuch ranch and trading post. All that hard, freezing ride the Kid was thinking,
You have lost control.

Will Hudgens was not just a storekeeper, he was a deputy sheriff in White Oaks. Happening upon the wreckage of his mercantile operation, he shouted a hue and cry for a lynching and collected a posse of fourteen men to chase down the thieves overnight by following their horses’ hoofprints in the deepening snow. It was not yet five in the morning when they got to the Greathouse & Kuch roadhouse, so the fourteen reclined on horse blankets in the snow, hating the zero cold as they cradled Winchesters and waited for the sun to rise.

Whiskey Jim Greathouse got his nickname from his moonlighting job of illegally selling liquor to Indians. He employed a short-order cook from Berlin, whose first job that morning was to harness a Clydesdale horse team in the stables. His boots were crunching in the snow and he was hiding his face from the wind with the lifted collar of his buffalo coat when he was tackled and pinned deep into a drift by a few of the White Oaks men.

“Who ya got in that house?” Deputy Jimmy Carlyle asked.

The Kid was first up and heating water for coffee in a fireplace pan when a cook who was floury with snow hurried inside and held out a folded sheet of paper. “Der ist a posse,” he said. “Here a message.”

Charlie Bowdre and Tom Folliard wandered over as the Kid read aloud, “ ‘We have you surrounded and there’s no escape. We demand you surrender. Deputy Sheriff William H. Hudgens.’ ”

With the cuff of his overlarge sweater, the Kid wiped a garden of frost from a four-pane window and looked out at rifles bristling in the flare of first light. “We been here before, Tom.”