The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (39 page)

“Only if
he fathered
Cactus on his death bed. And even then he wouldn’t have been able to tell his son all those stories because he would be dead.”

“Okay, say he was seventy when Cactus was born. I remember lots of things my father told me when I was ten, some of them on this very road on our way to a cabin.”

“A seventy-year-old
couple conceived a child
?”

“Cactus’ mother was his father’s second wife. She was a lot younger. The first wife was washed away in a flood.”

“Likely story
,” she said
.
“
The dirty old man probably threw her in the river
because he had his eye on a younger woman
.”

“If Cactus was conceived when his father was seventy,
” I said, “
that still reaches back to the right era.”

“Right, an era when mountain men practiced
dentistry with pistols.
Face it, Hubie, that old coot was pulling your leg so hard, it’s a wonder you’re not six feet tall this morning.”

“
It doesn’t matter if everything he told me was
made from whole cloth spun from imaginary thread.
The important thing is
he gave me a possible solution to the dilemma.”

“
The dilemma about the identity of the dead guy? That if he was
from La Rei
na, why aren’t they worried about him? And if he
wasn’t
from La Reina, why was he in the ceremony?
That dilemma? Because that one’s easy.
” She laughed. “
All we have to do is find someone who is and is not from La Reina.”

“Exactly,” I said.

”
Exactly?”

“Exactly. You know why Billy the Kid was in jail awaiting hanging?”

“This is just a wild guess, Hubert, but maybe it was because he had murdered someone.”

“No, I don’t mean what
crime
got him in jail. I mean how did they manage to get him in jail.”

“I wondered about that. He was the most feared gunman in the West. He was fast on the draw, a deadly accurate shot and had nerves o
f
steel
. Plus he
also
had a lot of friends
who would protect him.
I don’t think there was a l
a
wman alive who could’
ve
captured him
.”

“Right
.
And no one did capture him. He turned himself
in
.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because the Territorial Governor had promised him immunity.”

“Lew Wallace?”

I nodded.

“If he had immunity, why were they planning to hang him?”

“Because Wallace withdrew the immunity.”

“He double-crossed him?”

“He did. And when I started thinking about that—“

“Wait, don’t tell me.”

NM 244 is the back road between Cloudcroft and Ruidoso, the two
major
resort towns in the Sacramento mountains. It winds its way through grassy valleys between
hillsides of pine and aspen.

The
truck’s big
V-8 engine pulled us up the slopes effortlessly, its hum the only sound. The turning aspen leaves fluttered in a gentle breeze.

“I’ve got it
,” she said. “
The dead guy was from La Reina. But he had left for some reason. He was lured back. Maybe not with a promise of immunity, but with something that convinced him to return just like the
immunity
convinced Billy to turn himself in.”

“Exactly. Nothing else makes sense.”

“So we have two things to figure out,” she said, sliding comfortably into her Nancy Drew persona. “First, why did he flee? Second, what lured him back?”

“When Whit reported back to me after talking to his police contacts in that part of the state, he said
the people they have on their missing list are people they suspect have relocated of their own volition, people running out on child support or skipping bail
, things like that
.
”

“Did he get their names?”

“I don’t think so. At that point, I thought what we were looking for was someone who had disappeared for no evident reason.”

“But he could call them back and get the names, right?”

“I assume so. I’ll
call him
when we get back.”

She reached into her purse on the seat between us and fished out her cell phone.

“Why not call him now?
” she said and handed
me the phone
.

I did, and he agreed to check and get back to me. The people who read DorothyL would be proud of me.

Sˀo Linotyusannah wanted to buy a present for her father’s upcoming birthday
, so she headed for
the quirky gift shops in the little village.

I spotted a
sign
for
Imaginary Books. Cloudcroft being a small
village
, I
figured it was probably
a place where you could order one of those electronic books Tristan reads. With
no paper or ink, ‘imaginary’ is a good word for them. But the little second floor shop above the bank and next to the local newspaper,
The Mountain Monthly
, had real books.

Ed the proprietor sold me two books,
The Saga of Billy the Kid
by Walter Noble Burns and
The Authentic Life
o
f Billy the Kid
by Pat F. Garrett.

There’s a
short order station at the back of the Mountaintop Mercantile
. The friendly teenager working there fixed us two green chile burritos to go, and I bought one of their fresh-baked apple pies to take to the Inchaustiguis.

We came down the mountain and stopped to buy pistachios at
McGinn's Pistachio Tree Ranch
. It felt like we were on vacation, and we were making the most of it. Besides, pistachios are great with Gruet.
Susannah took a picture of me standing under the
25 foot high pistachio made of plaster, insisting that I position myself so that the nut seeme
d to be growing out of my head.

The girl has a wacky sense of humor.

40

The entire Inchaustigui family was on the porch.

“Hi, Mr. Inchaustigui,” I said.

“Looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, Hubie, so you might as well start calling me Gus.”

I swallowed hard and shook his hand.

After all the handshakes and hugs, Susannah and her paren
ts
went inside. Mark and Matt stayed on the porch with me.

“We’ll give you a hand with the luggage,” Matt said.

As we headed back to the truck, Mark said. “We’ve put you two in the front guestroom. We’re
sort of old-
fashioned, but after our little talk, we decided it
’s
okay if you two bunk together.”

“Oh,” I said quickly, “we don’t do that.”

Smiles of relief spread across their faces.

“I guess you’re old-fashioned yourself,” said Matt. “That’s great to hear.”

“I knew we were right about you,” added Mark
, patting me on the shoulder,
“You’re a straight shooter, Hubie.”

I felt like a complete phony as I trailed behind them up onto the porch and into the house. If I were really a straight shooter, I would have set the record straight right t
hen and there
. But I couldn’t. I know it makes
little
sense, but I thought I’d be stepping on Susannah’s toes and hurting her feeling
s
if I disavowed any romance between us. It was her family. I had to discuss it with her first and trust her to handle it correctly.

Matt and Mark carried the two suitcases. I carried the pie. Given the way they had looked at it,
I knew
it would never see the
morrow
.

I got the front guestroom. Susannah got the room she grew up in. After we’d washed
off
the road dust, we gathered in the living room
. Matt and Mark had beer
, Susannah and Hilary had wine. Gus and I had
whiskey
over ice
.

It wasn’t as good as
High West Rocky Mountain Rye 21 Year Old
, but it also didn’t cost $130 a bottle
,
which is what I
later discovered to be the price of
High West
.

I told him it
was good whiskey and asked
what brand it was.
H
e handed me
the
bottle
of Don Quijote Blue Corn Bourbon. Made in New Mexico, obviously. Where else would they make bourbon from blue corn?

I love blue corn, and it doesn’t bother me that the dishes I make with it are blue. That just shows they have that good juju that’s in blueberries and other w
o
nder food
s. Personally, I pay little attention to that stuff. I just eat what’s fresh and tastes good.

But I have to say I was glad the whiskey was not blue.

What I was not glad about was Gus ho
i
sting his glass and saying, “A toast – to Hubie and Susannah.”

After a second round
of drinks
with a lot of reminiscing and banter among the Inchaustiguis, we made our way to the dining
room
where a table sagged under the weight of a bowl of salad, a plate of fresh-baked bread, a bowl of redskinned potatoes, a platter of roasted ears of corn, a big bowl of thick dark gravy and a roast that must have weighed fifteen pounds.