Widowmaker Jones (12 page)

A
pparently, nobody in Del Rio, Texas, found it odd that the judge rode with a red rooster perched on the back of his saddle skirts. Either it was nothing out of the normal, or the judge was known there, for several people stopped to wave at him or to call out greetings. Once, the rooster spied another little white rooster with a small harem of hens and wanted to go make a challenge, but the judge enticed him to stay mounted by reaching in his pocket and offering something to peck from his palm. Newt finally realized that the judge was carrying corn and using it to keep the fowl's company. The man obviously thought a lot of his pet.

No matter that his pet rode with him, the judge had been in a cranky mood, probably stemming from the fact that his boots had become wet swimming the Pecos River the evening before. When dried in front of a campfire, the boots had shrunk to the point that they pinched his feet badly—something that he continually complained about, no matter that Newt had taken his boots off to keep them dry while swimming the river and had suggested that the judge do the same. The judge hadn't listened, but the warm welcome he received in Del Rio seemed to lift his spirits, pinching boots or not.

“It appears you're a known man in these parts,” Newt said.

“I admit I have somewhat of a good name along the border,” the judge said. “Remind me tonight, and I'll show you an article that the San Antonio newspaper wrote about me last year. Called me a staunch advocate for law and order.”

Newt had no wish to read anything about the judge, but kept that to himself. They crossed the Rio Grande midmorning, after the judge took the time to consort with some of his contacts. He said little of whatever he found out, but seemed confident that where he was taking them would lead to Cortina. Newt wasn't sure of that, but whether he liked to admit it or not, the judge was the best lead he had.

They camped on the side of a bare, rocky ridge overlooking the river below and the stage road that paralleled it. Anybody going south to Piedras Negras couldn't pass without being seen from their high perch.

The red rooster immediately began to scratch around in the sand and search the rock crevices for something to eat, clucking its strange chicken language, as if holding its own conversation. But the judge didn't let him get too far away, and held out a bit of the corn from his pocket.

“Come here, Shanghai,” he said.

The rooster's head rose at the sound of his name, and his sharp vision immediately spied the yellow kernels in the judge's open palm. It didn't hesitate and darted through the rocks at high speed with its neck outstretched and its wings held away from its body. The judge smiled while the rooster pecked the corn from his hand.

“Smart bird, old Shanghai here. Don't miss much, and he's got a set of eyes as sharp as a buzzard.”

Newt was only half paying attention, for the judge never unsaddled his horse, it seemed, at least not for the two times they had made camp. Newt felt sorry for the animal and slipped its bridle, removed the saddle from its sweaty back, and rubbed it down with a handful of dead grass. There was nothing to graze on in the rock pile the judge had chosen for their campsite, so Newt gave his and the judge's horse some of the corn from his own saddlebags, pouring it out on a flat rock.

“You dote on that animal too much,” the judge said.

“That horse won't carry you long without something to eat. Can't say I appreciate having to feed your horse from my own stores.”

“These Western horses know how to make do. We can stop and let them graze a bit in the morning when we get back down on the flats.”

Newt started to tell him that he wasn't going to take care of his damned horse anymore and hadn't hired on as his groom, but what the judge did then startled him too much and he lost his train of thought.

The judge grabbed the red rooster by the neck and snapped it with one twist of his fists. He let go of the bird and studied its twitching body for a moment. “Old Shanghai had a good run. Took him in trade from a Mexican fighting rooster man that owed me a dollar for a tooth I pulled for him.”

“Why did you kill him if you thought so much of him?”

The judge looked up. “Why did you think I brought him along? I don't favor posse work on an empty stomach, and old Shanghai was long past his prime.”

“He's liable to be tough eating, at that.”

“You got anything against eating something besides frijoles and beef? I'll not share my commissary with you if you do.”

“No, I don't get chicken often,” Newt said. “I thought you were partial to that bird.”

“Not as partial as I am to not going hungry. I remember when I first come west. I bet it was two years before I ate another egg or drank a cold glass of buttermilk. Man, did I ever get to missing buttermilk.”

Newt took a seat on a rock and watched the judge do a poor job of plucking the bird. “You ought to heat up some water to pluck that bird.”

“You pluck it, or let me do it my way.”

“Did you come out after the war?”

“War?” The judge jerked at a handful of feathers and grunted. “I never served in the war.”

“But I thought you said you were with Baylor at Mesilla. That sword in your saloon . . .”

“You never heard me say that. Only time I was ever at Mesilla was when I was still hauling freight on the Santa Fe and Chihuahua Trail.”

The judge was making sloppy work of the bird. He pitched it on the ground and with a frown on his face rubbed his palms together, trying to get clean of the feathers stuck to them. “I never was much good at picking feathers. My daddy whupped me once 'cause I was too slow when we were killing fryers. Whupped me like a dog, and I left out of there and come west.”

Newt could tell that the judge wasn't going to finish the bird, and picked it up and went to work on it as best he could. “Kentucky?”

“I never said I was from Kentucky. You got to get your facts straight.”

Newt knew good and well that the judge had claimed earlier to be from Kentucky, but he let it alone and worked at plucking the bird. “I tell you, some hot water would help things.”

“I ain't emptying my canteen. Go down to the river and fetch some if that's your wish. I say we gut it and hang it over the fire. The worst of those feathers will burn off.”

“I don't favor feathers with my chicken.”

“Suit yourself. I mind the time I was up on the Santa Fe Trail. I was a young buck then, fresh on the plains and out to prove I was tough as any of them. Was driving a six-up span of oxen. They paid me to break them to pull before we set out from Missouri. Big, old longhorn steers they bought off some Texan; mean as rattlesnakes and never had a rope or yoke on them.”

“I've got a little lard in my saddlebags. I don't have any flour, but what say I quarter this bird up and we fry it?”

“Like I said, suit yourself.” The judge lit a cigar and leaned back against a rock. “I mind the time when I would have eaten the ass-end out of a week-old dead buffalo. You ever been hungry? I don't mean just your usual hungry, but really hungry. So hungry that you can't think about anything else and would do anything to get a bite?”

Newt didn't answer, knowing that the judge didn't need a reply to keep on with his story, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

“It was back when I was whacking that bull train. Late in the year, and we got caught in a blizzard and lost the trail. We were out of supplies and had been for three days. Captain Cleveland, he offered to go ahead and find our way. Said if we tried to wait it out we would starve before the snow broke. Took his nigger, Sam, with him. Sam had been with the captain many a year and they were close.

“Well, Captain went out ahead and we didn't see him for a whole day. The snow was flying so thick you couldn't see fifty foot in front of you, and we thought we had lost him. Didn't make more than four miles or so, but we seen his fire right before dark and went to it. There he was, sitting beside it warming himself and he had a stewpot going. The smell of it like to have drove us crazy.

“He said he had stumbled across a snowbound buck antelope and killed it. We didn't even unyoke our teams, and tore into that stew like it was manna from heaven. Never tasted anything so good.”

Newt laid the plucked bird out on the ground and gutted it, careful to save the heart, liver, and gizzard from its craw. The grease in the cast-iron skillet over the fire was already melting before the judge went on with his story.

“We were already through with that antelope stew and leaned back and rubbing our bellies before any of us thought to ask where old Sam was. Captain Cleveland, he went to stuttering and wouldn't look us in the eye.

“We questioned him hard, and he admitted that he had killed old Sam and cooked him up in a stew.”

Newt fed a dead yucca stalk into the fire beneath the skillet and looked up at the judge. “You mean to tell me you ate a man?”

“Don't sound so judgmental. You weren't there.” The judge rubbed his cigar butt out and leaned forward. “I thought a lot of old Sam. Hell, we all did. Me and him got along fine. He might have belonged to Captain Cleveland, but he cooked my breakfast and made sure I had enough blankets when it was cold.

“Yes, sir, he saved my life that day. Won't say it didn't bother me some, later, but it was what it was. We thought about killing Captain Cleveland, but we were all guilty the same. Every one of us had eaten a bit of Sam.”

“I think you're pulling my leg.”

“You think what you will. Ain't that chicken cooked enough yet? The smell of it won't let me quit thinking about Sam.” The judge reached out and plucked his rooster's back from the skillet, tossing the hot morsel back and forth from hand to hand to keep it from burning him.

“I think that's still half-raw.”

The judge blew on it and tore off a piece and stuck it in his mouth. “Mmm. No, just right. Not as good as old Sam was, but it'll do in a pinch.”

“I'm beginning to think you're full of it.”

The judge squinted his sagging eyebrow, and Newt wasn't sure, but thought the judge winked. “You questioning the word of a justice of the peace in good standing and repute with the state of Texas?”

Newt set the skillet aside and took a leg from it. He picked gently at the hot flesh while he studied the judge over it. “I'm questioning the word of a windy fat man on the side of a Mexican mountain, with nothing better to do than to tell me tall stories to pass the time.”

“You ever ate nigger? Until you have, you aren't one to judge the merits of this case. My story stands until you qualify yourself as a subject expert.”

Newt worried at the gristle on the end of the leg bone he'd picked clean, frowning over it.

The judge grunted, as he was wont to do. “Did I offend you? You Tennessee boys are a mixed-up lot. Some were for the North and some for the South. Abolitionists some, and some for the slavers.”

“How about you quit treating me like a tenderfoot and tell me where we're headed?”

“You hand me that last leg and I'll tell you.”

Newt nodded at the skillet. By the time he had finished a wing, the judge had managed to eat the rest of the rooster.

The judge wiped his greasy hands on his pants leg, adjusted the Colt pistol stuffed behind his belt to a more comfortable place under the overhang of his belly, and sucked at his teeth. “We'll find Cortina with his sweetheart, exactly like I told you. No hurry. You can't rush this manhunting business.”

“If you're so certain he's there, why not catch him sooner rather than later?”

“Cortina's got friends. We go racing around after him and he'll get word,” the judge said. “We'll let him get settled in and his mind on other things. We want him surprised when we show up.”

“I don't care how we find him.”

The judge scoffed. “Do you know anything about Cortina? I can tell you don't, or you wouldn't be so careless. Cortina's used to being hunted. Has been since he popped out of his mama squalling. They say he took hold of her teat and his first pistol at the same time.”

“Seems like he's a known man.”

“Not as much as his daddy was, but he's cut a little swath of his own since then.”

“Who was his daddy?”

“You ever hear of Red Cortina?”

“I never.”

“You must be new to Texas. He was a Mexican army officer, politico, and big-shot
grande
at one time. Hated Texans worse than anything and formed himself a bandit army and raised hell with the Anglos on the American side of the river, stealing cattle and killing at will. The Rangers tried to bring him to bay for years, but he was a crafty cuss.”

“What happened to him?”

“His problem was that he was overly ambitious and always swapping sides with one government faction or another. Styled himself the power around Matamoros. Díaz finally had him locked up in prison.”

“And the Cortina we're looking for is his son?”

“Yep, back when Red was playing up to that Frenchy government and Maximilian he got hooked up with a young lady in Maximilian's court. I've heard that she was Maximilian's niece, but I don't know. Sometime later she had herself a bastard, but by that time Red had already double-crossed the French and swapped sides to fight against them. No matter, the whole thing was swept under the rug. At least that's what the rumors say, and what Javier tells his amigos sometimes when he's in his cups. Maybe it's true, or maybe Javier wants to sound more important than he is. Red Cortina had quite a following on the border. Came across the river once and took over the town of Brownsville. Like to give the Texans a fit until the Rangers pried him out.”